Will Maggie's passing merit a state funeral?

A few weeks ago it was rumoured that Tony Blair was contemplating a state funeral for Margaret Thatcher, the first such occasion since the death of Winston Churchill in 1965.

Civil servants were allegedly hatching secret plans.

Perhaps Mr Blair was calculating that if Lady Thatcher were to have a state funeral, his own case for having one might be strengthened when his time eventually comes.

If she doesn’t have one, he scarcely can. Or perhaps he wanted a public show of respect for a leader whom in some respects he genuinely admires.

Whatever the reason, the reports of civil servants burning the midnight oil in the Cabinet Office caused outrage in sections of the Labour Party, where Lady Thatcher is regarded as a divisive figure.

Rosie Cooper, the Labour MP for Lancashire West, made a complaint, and has just received the assurance she wanted from one of Mr Blair’s aides. Referring to her nightmare of a state funeral, John McTernan wrote: ‘There are no such plans.’

This, of course, does not rule out No 10 hatching plans at a future date, but the letter has achieved its purpose, which was to quieten down overwrought Labour MPs. Whether a mere aide such as Mr McTernan had a right to make an announcement on what will be a matter for the exercise of the Royal Prerogative may be seriously questioned.

Moreover, it is unseemly to be debating in public Lady Thatcher’s funeral arrangements when she remains comparatively hale and hearty. For all I know, she might, like her illustrious predecessor Benjamin Disraeli, not even want a state funeral. But whether she does or she doesn’t, the open discussion of the matter by an aide seems both impertinent and insensitive.

Mr McTernan, acting on behalf of Tony Blair, was cynically throwing a consoling fish towards the Labour Left. They may dislike Mr Blair but they abominate Lady Thatcher. To be told that she is not going to have a state funeral will shut them up for the time being, and send them off on their summer holidays with a spring in their step.

When Lady Thatcher eventually does die, these same people will be fighting their way to the microphone to bang on about her supposed shortcomings.

They will never concede that she turned around the British economy and, partly as a result of the Falklands War, restored Britain’s self-confidence and international prestige. If they had their way, we would still be stuck in the strikebound, high inflation, gloomy 1970s.

Why shouldn’t she have a state funeral? It is correctly said that Winston Churchill was the only Prime Minister in the 20th century to be given such an honour.

But Lady Thatcher apart, one wonders how many other leaders have had a powerful case. The only other state funeral in the 20th century for a non-royal was that of the imperialist soldier Lord Roberts of Kabul and Kandahar in 1914.

The 19th century had stronger candidates among political leaders. The Duke of Wellington (Prime Minister and victorious general), Lord Palmerston and William Gladstone all had state funerals.

Neither Palmerston nor Gladstone had been responsible for glorious major victories (though Palmerston was a terrific sabre-rattler) so it is not correct to say that only Prime Ministers who have won momentous wars receive state funerals.

Churchill’s state funeral now seems utterly appropriate. But he was, in his way, an even more divisive figure than Lady Thatcher — both within his own party and among Labour MPs.

In the 1930s he was derided by the Left as a reactionary opponent of home rule for India, and he was widely criticised for defending Edward VII when the King hoped to marry Wallis Simpson and keep his throne.

After the war, Churchill again clashed with the Left when he suggested that a Labour government would introduce a sort of Gestapo.

Yet this one-time hate-figure has been so taken up by modern leftists that not very long ago the late Mo Mowlam, a former New Labour Cabinet minister, nominated Churchill as the greatest Briton ever in a BBC television series.

Perhaps Lady Thatcher will never be embraced quite so enthusiastically by the Left, but the case of Churchill should remind us that the bitterness engendered by great political leaders is in the long run largely forgotten.

They would not be great if they were not prepared to take on, and beat, powerful interests and adversaries. This almost inevitably entails being divisive. What is ultimately remembered, though, are the achievements.

Lady Thatcher will be rightly celebrated as the leader who brought to an end a quarter of a century of British economic and political decline.

Of course she made mistakes — the poll tax for one, the signing of the European Single Act for another.

But without her reforms of the British economy, and her standing up to the overmighty trade unions, New Labour would never have happened, and Gordon Brown would not have presided over the longest and most successful period of economic growth this country has experienced since the 19th century.

Isn’t that worth a state funeral? The sniping from narrow leftists is doubtless only to be expected. More shocking in a way is the wariness of the modern Tory leadership.

A spokesman for David Cameron said: ‘Margaret Thatcher was one of Britain’s greatest Prime Ministers and she remains in good health.’ He was not prepared to say that she deserves a state funeral.

The Cameroons are anxious to place a little distance between themselves and the perceived legacy of Lady Thatcher. Supporting a state funeral might bring them rather too close.

That’s gratitude for you.

Surely the point is that no former Prime Minister, not even Winston Churchill, is going to command universal adulation at the time of his death.

There must have been diehard Tories who did not weep into their handkerchiefs as William Gladstone lay in state in Westminster Hall; and critics of Palmerston who were not as grief stricken as they might have been as his cortege wended its way down Whitehall. What these people largely accepted, however, was the greatness of their political opponents.

The paltry denizens of New Labour may not be able to express an equal generosity of spirit, and the cautious Cameroons may be frightened of too close an association with a leader whom they think is still controversial. But there are millions of British people — not just Tories — who will believe that Margaret Thatcher’s political achievements should be honoured when the time comes.

Not many of us who can remember the 1970s would want to go back to them. This determined, stubborn, sometimes maddening and, above all, brave woman did make a big difference to our history. In most respects it has been a good one.

Shelve the issue for the time being. There should be no unseemly public argument about Margaret Thatcher’s funeral arrangements. But, when the time comes, we must give her what she deserves.